Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 6

All the family of Zove's House except the little children gathered that
night in the great hall downstairs, where high windows stood open to the
moist night air. Starlight and the presence of trees and the sound of the
brook all entered into the dimly lit room, so that between each person and
the next, and between the words they said, there was a certain space for
shadows, night-wind, and silence.
"Truth, as ever, avoids the Stranger," the Master of the House said to
them in his deep voice. "This stranger brings us a choice of several
unlikelihoods. He may be an idiot born, who blundered here by chance;
but then, who lost him? He may be a man whose brain has been damaged
by accident, or tampered with by intent. Or he may be a Shing masking his
mind behind a seeming amentia. Or he may be neither man nor Shing; but
then, what is he? There's no proof or disproof for any of these notions.
What shall we do with him?"
"See if he can be taught," said Zove's wife Rossa.
The Master's eldest son Metock spoke: "If he can be taught, then he is
to be distrusted. He may have been sent here to be taught, to learn our
ways, insights, secrets. The cat brought up by the kindly mice."
"I am not a kindly mouse, my son," the Master said. "Then you think
him a Shing?"
"Or their tool."
"We're all tools of the Shing. What would you do with him?"
"Kill him before he wakes."
The wind blew faintly, a whippoorwill called out in the humid, starlit
Clearing.
"I wonder," said the Oldest Woman, "if he might be a victim, not a
tool. Perhaps the Shing destroyed his mind as punishment for something
he did or thought. Should we then finish their punishment?"
"It would be truer mercy," Metock said.
"Death is a false mercy," the Oldest Woman said bitterly.
So they discussed the matter back and forth for some while, equably
but with a gravity that included both moral concern and a heavier, more
anxious care, never stated but only hinted at whenever one of them spoke
the word Shing. Parth took no part in the discussion, being only fifteen, but
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